Protagonist Costume Ideas

In my research of a range of urban drama films, a key costume feature which reoccurs in most of them is a classic branded tracksuit. This is especially appropriate for boy characters. Our protagonist is a male character so something like this will be very appropriate. Since we are creating a trailer we will have more than one character so we will have to start collecting and finding multiple tracksuit garments for the actors to wear. Layering of these kinds of items is also common with body warmers or North Face jackets being popular with the kind of social group we are trying to imitate. For females we are looking at more skimpy outfits with accessories such as big hoop earrings and short skirts.
We should think about maybe using an aspect of costume to highlight the protagonist against some of the other characters for example having brighter trainers. This will allow this character to be set apart from the other characters in the trailer, which is important in trailers to clarify the plot for the film.
Multiple costumes will be required for the protagonist alone as it is a trailer so all the shots take place along a longer period of time. So he will have to represented for more than one day.

• Nike trainers (Air force)
• Matching branded tracksuit (most likely Nike)
• Plain t-shirt
• Chain necklace? 
• Little satchel? 
• Big puffa jacket? 

Website Production

Before creating our own website, a lot of research needed to be carried in order to grasp the conventions of film websites so as to adopt them in the creation of ours. The main conventions that we found in film websites were:

• Teaser Trailer set to play automatically as soon as you enter the website.
• Title on top right or centre using same typography as in trailer. 
• Background suggestive of narrative- often featuring location or protagonist.
• Simple yet consistent colour scheme conforming to genre. 
• 4-8 links to other pages on website (e.g. gallery, cast, book tickets) 
• Links to twitter, facebook etc.
• Reviews/ ratings of the film.

 By looking at the website for 2015 film Run All Night the conventions are seen and we were able to decide how best to apply these to our website. when going onto this website the screen automatically plays the trailer, after which the background displaying the title and other information appears allowing you to navigate around the other pages on the site. 

The design of this website uses a basic black, blue and yellow colour scheme hinting at the genre of action. This runs parallel with the background which involves the modern day setting and introduces the protagonist and other members of the cast. 

We used Wix to create our website, and chose the 'Film Site' template as our basic starting point.

The first stage involved choosing an appropriate background for our site, which portrayed the genre and setting of the trailer. For this we photoshopped a picture of our protagonist into the foreground of an establishing shot of London taken from our trailer. Upon customising the background we chose to have the image fill the whole screen and scroll down with the page, giving a professional feel to the website.


We chose what links to other pages to have after comparing lots of existing film websites to see which occurred most often. We chose to have pages linking to home, about, gallery, contact and book tickets. By placing these at the top in a subtle font size and colour, the website appears professional and conforms to the genre.

The most important part of the film website is the trailer, allowing the audience an insight into genre and narrative. We made the trailer a focal point of the page, making sure it was the first thing the audience saw. We chose the option to make it play automatically in order to immediately attract the viewer's attention- a convention we saw was extremely common in existing film websites.

Many film websites used reviews from national sources, such as newspapers, as a main way of promoting their film. In many cases, these often involved star ratings- something we wanted to imitate in our website production. To create this effect, I found a plain black star image with a transparent background on google and imported this as an image onto the website. I then chose an appropriate size for the star and duplicated it many times. Obviously it was key to put high ratings (we chose to do 5 star and 4 star), and also short quotes which would make a strong impact. We included the quote from 'The Sunday Times' which appears at the beginning of our trailer so as to display continuity. Again, we stuck to the black, white and grey colour scheme that appears throughout the website so as to conform to the aesthetic appeal of the page.

Below is an image of the final production of our website. Whilst the layout is fairly simple, this gives a professional effect. The genre becomes immediately clear through the background image, colour scheme and reviews. As you can see, the typography of the title is the same as used in the trailer, showing continuity and acting as a trademark to our piece.

 

Finally, we reviewed the layout of the website as it would appear on a mobile phone, making sure that the placement of the features would work in a portrait view as well as in landscape.

 

Evaluation- First Draft vs. Final Piece

As you can see from comparing the first draft of our trailer to the final piece, a lot of things were changed in order to further enhance the effect and impact that the trailer had. The main differences between the two include:

•  An increase in the typography size- we particularly wanted the review to stand out more as it is the first shot and therefore plays a key part in enticing an audience.
• In terms of the rest of the typography that appears throughout the trailer, rather than using the plain black background as seen in the first draft, we used the reoccurring shot of the underpass as a background for this. This gave a much more professional sense to the overall piece.
• We changed the initial shot of our protagonist as we felt this better matched our narrative aim. The shot used in the first draft makes him appear worried whereas we wanted him to appear fairly calm at the beginning in order to conform to Todorov's theory of equilibrium.
• We added more post- production elements to our final piece as we noticed that the first draft was lacking in this. The main thing that this included was the use of the black and white filter in certain shots- a convention we found was common in existing urban drama trailers.
• We also filmed new shots in which to include such as the violence shots. This was the main thing that we felt was missing from our first draft- stopping us from excelling into the typical urban drama conventions. Obviously we did not have access to stunt doubles and therefore had to think cleverly about how we filmed fight scenes whilst making them look realistic.
• We removed unnecessary shots that appeared in our first draft, such as the ones of the protagonist running up the stairs and the group of girls smoking. Not only did these not add anything to our trailer but they appeared unprofessional and amateur at points. By doing this we allowed ourselves more time for more effective shots.
• We improved the appearance of the drug lord by using a sound bridge to merge his voice with other shots. This made him appear a lot more intimidating, adding the element of mystery that the trailer required.
• We increased the pace more steadily by making the shots gradually get faster and more action intensive. The end of the final piece particularly contrasts with the first draft as there is a lot more action shots (such as the protagonist jumping over the gate) which added to the excitement of the trailer.
• The black and white shot of the protagonist with a black eye and blood dripping helps to enhance the clarity of the genre and conform to the narrative that we were aiming towards. Used in conjunction with the shot of him on the floor with a bat and a pool of blood, the audience can see the violent theme that runs within the narrative and is enticed by the sense of danger.
• The difference between the first draft and trailer was the fact the title at fist appears over the final shot of the protagonist before reverting onto a black background. This forms a smoother link between the trailer and the ending, giving a much more professional look to the piece.

Shooting script: Day 6

12:30 pm: arrive at car park location
12:45 pm: get shots running through car park
01:00 pm: get shots of car park ceiling whilst moving

BREAK

04:00 pm: meet at second location, empty basketball court
04:15 pm: costume change into tracksuits
04:25 pm: shots of Ben fighting
04:35 pm: shots of Ben climbing fences and gates
04:45 pm: filming day ends

Evaluation:

• The fighting scenes were shot on school premises. We tried to make this as unnoticeable as possible. 
• Difficult to keep the camera steady whilst filming the tracking shot of the car park ceiling. We will attempt to stabilise this shot in the editing stages on the software Final Cut Pro.  

Shooting script: Day 5

06:00 pm: actor arrives (Kevin)
06:10 pm: costume change into suit and eccentric tie
06:15 pm: props gathered
06:15 pm: shoot optional speaking shots with Kevin outside
06:30 pm: shots of Kevin speaking inside, using various angles and rooms.
07:00 pm: Holly arrives
07:15 pm: costume changes
07:20 pm: shots of Holly drinking alcohol and doing 'balloons'
07:50 pm: filming day ends

Evaluation:

• We do not possess a proper microphone used for filming so we had to make do with the in-built microphone of the camera. This limited the quality of shots filmed with diegetic sound such as actor (Kevin) speaking. 

Shooting script: Day 4

05:30 pm: arrive at filming location inside house
05:45 pm: gather props such as roll of money
05:50 pm: film shots with Ben giving mother character money
06:00 pm: test night street lighting
06:15 pm: get shots of Ben in street
06:35 pm: filming day ends

Evaluation:

• Very low levels of light outside made it hard to film without needing a light source. We got around this by using a low street light to light up Ben's face properly. 
• We were unable to produce a roll of money big enough so we had to make do with as much as we had.

Shooting script: Day 3

04:00 pm: locational shots such as Ferris wheel
04:30 pm: locational shots of Canary wharf and city
05:00 pm: get skateboard and film forward-tracking Greenwich underpass shot
06:00 pm: get multiple skateboard shots of Greenwich underpass
06:15 pm: filming day finishes

Evaluation:

• Greenwich underpsas forward-tracking shot was more successful than anticipated although it proved difficult to keep the shot steady- we will attempt to stabilise the shot in Final Cut Pro during the editing stages.